The Naked City Blog

Exploring life in the city – Charlotte – and the greater metro region. Looking at urban design, transportation, growth, the built environment and more.

Mary Newsom is a lifelong journalist and observer of city life in the Charlotte region and beyond, with a focus on urban design, sustainable development, growth and city planning. She is associate director of urban and regional affairs at the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute. Her blog reflects her views only, not necessarily those of the institute or of UNC Charlotte.
Contact: mnewsom@uncc.edu.

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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Heads, tales and feet

I walked to work today in what must be considered perfect weather for a 4.5-mile hike: a sunny morning, cool but not cold, blooming bulbs and dogwood trees, grass as vibrant green as the eye can absorb. And just as lovely, today I had no near-death encounters with oblivious drivers.

And those near-death encounters have all taken place where there are sidewalks. When it comes to pedestrian safety, sidewalks are vital, but they are only the beginning of the tale. When you use your feet, you also have to use your head. Every street crossing is a hazard. Every driveway is potentially dangerous. Every side street can be treacherous.

Here are some of the hazards when you walk, even with sidewalks: Drivers who forget to look both ways before pulling out of driveways or side streets. Drivers who either don't know or don't care that you have the right of way, even if they are turning. Because I am alert to this, I did not get hit today by the woman exiting a parking lot who pulled right in front of me as I approached on the sidewalk. (I had already decided to walk behind her car, just to be safe.)

Almost every day as I drive to and from work along Eastway and North Tryon Street, I see people darting across those busy streets to get to bus stops or stores on the other side. One huge problem is the distance between signalized intersections. As this map shows, if you get very far outside of uptown - which to its credit remains the best urban walking area in the city - you find pedestrians get little respect. Tell people they should only cross at signals, and if the signals are a mile apart you are basically telling them to walk as much as 40 minutes extra to do so.

Here's a map the city's Department of Transportation put together about four years ago, showing on how many thoroughfare segments pedestrians have to go at least a quarter-mile (a five-minute walk) or a half-mile (a 10-minute walk) between traffic signals. You can't tell from this map, but in some places the distances are up to 2 miles.

That's not the only problem. The intersection at Garinger High School has a signal. But it has no pedestrian crosswalks, and the intersection design allows cars to turn right from Sugar Creek Road onto Eastway without stopping at all. Remember, this is right in front of a large high school. The school opened in 1960, and in that era the city didn't even offer school bus transportation to students. (I have a friend who graduated from Garinger, Class of 1961.) So it's fair to say officialdom has had plenty of time to realize that students might be walking to and from the high school.

Another problem: Many of Charlotte's major streets aren't owned or managed by CDOT at all, but by the N.C. Department of Transportation. Those state-owned streets include Eastway and South Tryon Street, sites of two of the recent accidents. Butler is also outside CDOT's jurisdiction.

And finally, even with sidewalks, crosswalks and pedestrian lights, drivers have to be trained to expect pedestrians, and pedestrians have to be trained to walk defensively, ever wary of motorists turning into your path regardless of who has the right of way.

That means that no one should think just building sidewalks solves the problem.Yes, build them and build more of them. But I'd invite our city council members to get out on foot in their districts around the city, to experience the pleasures of long walks on cool spring mornings, with the birds singing and the traffic humming and a sense of danger in the air.

5
comments:

S
said...

I will not cross the street without making eye-contact with the driver - especially if I am crossing in front of them from their right (since they are usually only looking left before making a right-hand turn). I've almost been struck twice - both times I was in a marked crosswalk and one of the time I came so close to being hit, the car knocked a bag of groceries out of my hand.

The pedestrians and motorists of this city need to be educated and put down the mobile phones.

My family was discussing this issue over the weekend. We had just come back from a walk in my brother's neighborhood in Cincinnati, with no sidewalks. Really not that big of a deal because there is little traffic in the neighborhood other than residents, who for the most part seem well aware of the many walker,s bicyclers, joggers, etc who are out and about. But many of the pedestrians themselves seemed clueless--walking facing the wrong direction on the street, jogging past intersections without even glancing at the cross street, and so forth. I constantly see the same behavior in my neighborhood here in Charlotte. My brother and I reminisced about how "back in the day" we were taught pedestrian safety at school. We especially recalled posters admonishing us to always face traffic when walking. When did schools drop these safety messages? Was it because kids for the most part stopped walking to school?

The "streets" or "roads" that I was referring to are in no way dangerous to cross so you can walk facing traffic. No excuses.

If a road is truly busy I think it would be equally dangerous to walk with your back to traffic as it would be to attempt to cross the road so you can walk on the correct side. You probably should not be walking there at all.